Hey everyone! I’m setting up a Discord server for my friend group and we play Blood on the Clocktower sometimes. The problem is I’m the only one who really knows all the character abilities well.
I want to create a bot where people can type something like !Detective and it shows the Detective’s power and description. I’ve tried searching online but haven’t found any existing bots that do this specific thing.
Has anyone built something similar or know how to set this up? I tried using some custom command bots but they have limits on how many commands you can add. Since BotC has so many characters, I need something that can handle a lot of different commands.
Any suggestions for bot frameworks or existing solutions would be great. I’m not super technical but willing to learn if I need to code something myself.
I dealt with this exact thing 6 months ago with my gaming group. Carl-bot’s automod feature plus their tag system worked great. Set up tags for each character that trigger when someone types the name - way more flexible than basic custom commands. Takes about an hour to get all the characters loaded, but then everyone just types the character name and gets the full ability description instantly. Carl-bot’s free and handles tons more commands than other bots. Much easier than building from scratch, especially if you’re not technical. The tag system even does aliases so people can type shortened character names and still get results.
I’d go with a simple JSON database and Python with discord.py. Did this for another tabletop game and it worked great. You can scrape character data from the Blood on the Clocktower wiki or just enter it manually once, then store everything as clean JSON. Python makes searches super easy - you can even add fuzzy matching so typos won’t break anything. Hosting’s cheap on Railway or Render, and you control the whole data format. Takes some setup if you’re new to it, but once it’s running you can add characters or tweak existing ones without messing with the bot code.
Honestly, these solutions are way more complicated than needed. Had the same issue when our team wanted quick access to internal docs and API references.
I set up a Latenode workflow connecting Discord webhooks to a simple database. Dump all your character info into Airtable or any basic database. Someone types your command, Latenode grabs the data and formats it for Discord.
You can make it smart too. Handle partial matches so “!detect” finds Detective. Add reaction buttons for related characters or team info. I threw in a random character picker for when people can’t decide.
No server maintenance, no coding headaches, update character info from anywhere. Scales perfectly for expansions or custom characters later.
Took me an afternoon to set up, been solid ever since. Way less hassle than managing a traditional Discord bot.
Had this exact problem eight months ago. Dyno bot’s custom commands saved me - works great for character lookups. Set up aliases so people can use short names or misspellings. The character descriptions embed nicely with clean formatting in Discord. Dyno handles way more custom commands than other bots, and the setup’s easy even if you’re not technical. Only pain is manually entering each character, but after that it’s smooth sailing. I threw in some extras like team breakdowns and character counts per script. Perfect for our Blood on the Clocktower games and surprisingly good with typos.
I built this exact thing for my gaming group last year. Skip the Discord bot hosting headaches - I used Latenode with a webhook system for character lookups.
Here’s how: Put all your character data in a Google Sheet (name, ability, team, whatever). Set up a Latenode workflow that triggers on your command format. It searches the sheet and shoots the character info back to Discord.
Best part? No command limits, so you can add as many characters as you want. New characters or homebrew stuff? Just update the spreadsheet. Zero code changes.
I threw in random character suggestions and team filtering too. Took maybe 2 hours to build and it’s been bulletproof for months.
Way better than dealing with traditional Discord bots and server uptime issues. Check it out: https://latenode.com
have you checked out discord.js? it’s really flexible for bots, and you can create a char lookup feature pretty easily. use a json file for your characters and their skills. there are tons of tutorials out there to help you get started!